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Farewell
What comes back to me amidst the ache, is the warm smile melting into the evening's soft golden hue.
The slender shoulders, delicate limbs, and lightly waving long braid.
The departing figure of one who won't look back
The heartrendingly kind voice that echoes in my ears.

@ ganbaru - I think you have quite a bit of choices to choose from, so just choose the one that sounds the best to you. Or modify it a bit to fit how you like it. I don't know how many more ways we can come up with to translate it. The meaning's are all right, so yeah, just choose what you like.

Quote:

そのスーパーへはよく来るんですか。」
「時々来ます

This sounds odd to me. If you want to use 来る then using その is kind of weird. It should be この. If you want to use その then you should use 行く. And it might be better to switch the particle to に in that case.

This sounds odd to me. If you want to use 来る then using その is kind of weird. It should be この. If you want to use その then you should use 行く. And it might be better to switch the particle to に in that case.

I did a double take on that too. Since the entire conversation is not shown, the quote may be referring to a third party, like:

Hmm...if we're talking third person then the only way I see it working would be if that person lives faraway, and the super market is close by somewhere. Then that person's coming from faraway to “come” into this area to go the supermarket would make sense I guess. But I would still change "he" for "ni".

Just wondering if anyone shares my pet peeves about Japanese textbooks for English speakers? Nothing is more annoying than...

1. Textbooks which are in romaji for the first 200 pages. Honestly, it takes only an hour of your time to memorise hiragana and katakana. That's equivalent to one night's worth of Japanese homework.

2. Textbooks which don't contain a single kanji. Or textbooks designed for a year-long course which introduce no more than 30 kanji. Well, maybe I'm slightly biased since I had to memorise 30~50 kanji a week in primary school -.-

I guess the only things that might be worse are Korean textbooks that are completely in romaji (yes they do exist, sheer horror!). Hangul, in all their beautiful simplicity and elegance, can be memorised in 15 minutes...

Just wondering if anyone shares my pet peeves about Japanese textbooks for English speakers? Nothing is more annoying than...

1. Textbooks which are in romaji for the first 200 pages. Honestly, it takes only an hour of your time to memorise hiragana and katakana. That's equivalent to one night's worth of Japanese homework.

2. Textbooks which don't contain a single kanji. Or textbooks designed for a year-long course which introduce no more than 30 kanji. Well, maybe I'm slightly biased since I had to memorise 30~50 kanji a week in primary school -.-

Oh, those are HORRIBLE. Then again those are the ones you get for general audiences - 'Teach Yourself Japanese in 15 minutes' and all that. I often get the feeling that people who buy those are never really that serious in the first place...

Quote:

I guess the only things that might be worse are Korean textbooks that are completely in romaji (yes they do exist, sheer horror!). Hangul, in all their beautiful simplicity and elegance, can be memorised in 15 minutes...

Learning all the pronunciation rules on the other hand, takes far longer.

Just wondering if anyone shares my pet peeves about Japanese textbooks for English speakers? Nothing is more annoying than...

1. Textbooks which are in romaji for the first 200 pages. Honestly, it takes only an hour of your time to memorise hiragana and katakana. That's equivalent to one night's worth of Japanese homework.

2. Textbooks which don't contain a single kanji. Or textbooks designed for a year-long course which introduce no more than 30 kanji. Well, maybe I'm slightly biased since I had to memorise 30~50 kanji a week in primary school -.-

I wish the post WW2 'get ride of kanji' thing was successful. I hate all this memorization. Kana ftmfw.

Okay, here's a story for you...

When my grandfather went to South Korea on business trips in the 1970s, communication was easy. Although he spoke Chinese and they spoke Korean, once everyone put pen to paper and expressed their thoughts in a few kanji (mostly nouns), a degree of mutual understanding was possible. My grandfather could also understand all street signs, maps, restaurant menus, etc.

A Japanese businessman who went to South Korea in the 1970s would have experienced the same ease of communication and understanding. Ditto for Chinese people in Japan and Japanese people in China today.

However, South Korea gradually got rid of kanji over the last 30 years. When my grandfather visited in the late 1990s, communication was no longer possible without an interpreter. For Japanese visitors, Seoul's government had to design special maps and translate signs... into katakana.

In some respects, kanji and Confucianism are the two thin threads which hold together the mutually hostile and vindictive nations of East Asia. Let's preserve them, by all means.

Addendum: Another consideration would be the insane number of homonyms in East Asian languages. South Korea is facing this very problem now; despite the loss of kanji in everyday life, Korean books and newspapers still need to insert kanji once in a while to clarify the meaning of certain words.